Alliances

Paul B. Thompson Tonya C. Cook Alliances

Shadows

Shadows gathered around. No amount of light would dispel them.

Kerianseray, seeking death, vanished in the blink of an eye. So too had the elves’ tenuous peace disappeared, like water spilled on the hot stone streets of Khuri-Khan. Gilthas Pathfinder, Speaker of the Sun and Stars, had tried to maintain peace as long as he could, but it evaded his grasp. His wife gone, concord lost, the Speaker’s only thought was to save his people. So he chased a shadow called Inath-Wakenti.

Adala Fahim, chief of the Weya-Lu tribe of Khurish nomads, pursued vengeance. The loved ones of her tribe had been slaughtered by a shadow which she saw in the shape of elves. So great was her anger, it took on a life of its own, a name of its own—maita, fate—and commanded the loyalty of numerous tribes.

Prince Shobbat plotted to replace his father, Sahim-Khan, on the throne of Khur. He made pacts with sorcerers and fanatics and traveled deep into the desert to see the shadows of the future. The Oracle of the Tree gave him the glimpse he craved, and it was far more than he had bargained for. The shadows entered his soul. In the fertile field of the prince’s treacherous mind, the shadows grew and multiplied until the light of reason was nearly extinguished.

A master plotter in his own right, Sahim-Khan bent the disparate elements of his kingdom to his will to preserve his unhappy guests, the elves. Sahim dreamed of great days for Khur, of triumphs on the battlefield, in the council chamber, and in the vibrant souks, where all manner of goods and services were sold. The seed of these dreams was the treasure the khan extracted from the Speaker. When shadows gathered from many sides to endanger the continuing supply of this treasure, Sahim dared the wrath of the elves’ enemies to safeguard their exit from his city. In such ways are heroes made, even heroes with the blackest hearts and basest motives.

Across the world more shadows gathered. A grieving queen would not give up the search for her lost king. An ambitious child sought to exceed the fame of her bloody father. A loyal warrior searched for the Speaker’s lost consort. A peerless bounty hunter stalked a hidden criminal. And entangled in the ghostly expanse of the Silent Vale, a scholar courted madness by trying to fathom a secret left behind by gods.

Of all these shadows, the longest and darkest was cast by a faceless, nameless being, delivered to death’s very doorstep. Cursed with a life he loathed, he must choose between oblivion and blessed obscurity, or glory and the endless terror of discovery.

Finally, one other had gone abroad to meet his destiny. Older than the trees, he followed in the footprints of the gods, striving to decipher the shadows they left behind five thousand years earlier. He intended that no one and nothing would stand in his way. Kingdoms and nations, the lives of thousands, were nothing compared to his final goal: eternity itself. The sun rose. Only the deepest shadows could remain.

Chapter 1

No breath of breeze stirred among the trees. A dense canopy of leaves, parched by summer heat until they were brittle as glass, cast a perpetual shade on the forest floor. Although excluded, the sun made its presence felt. The air in the forest was stiflingly hot and still as a tomb. Birds did not sing, and nothing moved that could avoid moving.

A trail no wider than a horse’s hips was worn through the underbrush. It wound up hills and down hollows, following no discernible path. At an uncommonly straight stretch, the path ran along the foot of a hill, between a pair of lofty ash trees. The hill comprised shelves of broken slate, terraced down like a timeworn staircase to disintegrate at last into the dust of the narrow path.

A person occupied the last of the slate steps. Covered in a monkish robe despite the heat, he sat with his forearms resting on his knees, hands hidden in the robe’s capacious sleeves. His head was completely covered by a ragged cloth sack, loosely tied about his neck. Holes were cut out for his eyes. Rips and tears too numerous to count dotted the robe’s faded brown surface, each neatly darned or patched.

He had been sitting there, unmoving, unspeaking, for a very longtime. Where his robe touched the ground it clung, matted by leaf mold. Some who passed took him for a scarecrow. Others saw the stick thinness of his limbs, the knobby shape of his joints, and decided he must be a corpse. One or two, thinking to relieve the dead fellow of his purse, approached. They saw his eyes.

Staring from the sack, the eyes were not dead, but neither did they belong to a sane or peaceful being. The whites were shining and damp, as with tears, but the corners were as dry as dust. Set in them were pupils as hard as gems. When the eyes did blink, their lids were revealed to be mottled red, without any lashes at all.